Following his advice may not make the decisions any easier, but it should at least help you understand-and explain-why you make the choices you do.
CIO Managing Editor David Rosenbaum sat down with Professor Badaracco following his presentation at the CIO Leadership Conference 2006 in Cambridge, Mass. What follows is the transcript of that conversation.
David Rosenbaum: Professor Badaracco, could you briefly state the four questions that you should ask yourself when you're addressing a problem?
Joseph Badaracco: Yes. The problems I talked about, David, were situations that I call "right vs. right" problems. So you've got two responsibilities, and you've got to make good on both of them. And the four questions I think that will really help people cut to the fundamentals are these:
- What are the consequences of different ways of dealing with the problem for everybody who's going to be affected by it?
- Which individuals and which groups involved in the situation have rights that you've really got to respect? People may have a right to be told the truth. Shareholders have a right to good returns, and so forth. Everybody's got an obligation to obey the law, and people have a right to expect corporate officers to do so.
- The third question is about the messages you want to send about your values as a leader, and about the values of your organization. Often in these tough "right vs. right" conflicts, people are really watching closely, and you're sending messages about your character and the character of the kind of organization you're trying to create.
- And the final question is what's going to work. It's Machiavelli's question. You've got to be practical. You can't simply tote up consequences, and dwell on rights, and think about your character. You need something that's going to actually make a difference, and so you've got to think about that question in conjunction with the other four.
- source: http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/News.asp?id=50169
